I'm a poll worker in Fulton County, Georgia. Not many people want to do the job here.

• A 40-year-old poll worker in Atlanta, Georgia, has worked six elections since 2020.
• They specialize in helping voters with provisional ballots and worked the 2022 midterm elections.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a 40-year-old Georgia poll worker in Fulton County. They've asked to remain anonymous to avoid harassment, but Insider has verified their identity and employment with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I worked as an assistant manager at a polling location in Fulton County, Georgia, where election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss worked during the 2020 presidential election. Last year, in a lawsuit filed against Rudy Giuliani and the pro-Trump network One America News, Freeman and Moss said they were harassed for being accused of election fraud and have basically been homebound since the election. Because of this, not many people want to do this job anymore, specifically here.

I first started working the polls in 2020 for the presidential election, when a lot of poll workers quit because of the pandemic. Since then, I've done six elections. I wake up at around 4:15 a.m. on election day and get dressed in the dark. I'll drive about 30 minutes to be there by 5 a.m. so that we can open the polls by 7 a.m.

At my polling location, there's a manager, two assistant managers, and then Tuesday we had three additional poll clerks who were first-timers. We also had a poll tech who knows the most about the machines and is there in case something breaks.

In all, there were seven of us, which was a good number for our location. But I've done it before where there were only two of us. That was the case in a primary last June. You just have to make do because no one else is there.

I was a little nervous because I'd heard there would be more observers this time

This year, there were a lot of official election observers, affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican party, who were on an official list and assigned to a precinct. Election observers are allowed in the voting area to make sure voting laws are followed. We knew we had two Republican poll watchers coming to watch all day. Anytime you have someone watching everything you're doing and questioning it, it's a little nerve-wracking. One of our Republican election observers appeared to have fallen asleep while he was there, so that made me less nervous.

There weren't many election issues, but we had a guy come in to vote who had just fallen off his skateboard and was bleeding profusely. He asked if we had a first-aid kit, but we didn't think to prepare for that. Luckily, one of my coworkers had a first-aid kit in their car, so we got him cleaned up and then he voted.

I specialize in helping voters fill out provisional ballots

During my first election, I was assigned that task. I think the biggest challenge is that, once in a while, voters come in and have lost their license, or recently moved and haven't updated their license. Anytime there's a question about whether someone's in the right place, they need to vote provisionally. They vote on paper and their vote is kind of put on hold until the county can resolve whatever issue they got flagged with. We don't want to turn anyone away unless it's very clear that they shouldn't be voting, like if they aren't registered.

On Tuesday, we had a couple of people who had moved from out of state and showed up to vote with their Georgia driver's license. We had to tell them that when you sign up to get a driver's license in Georgia, you're not automatically registered. Somebody else showed up wanting to do same-day registration because that's what they had done in a previous state. We had to tell them they couldn't vote because Georgia doesn't allow same-day registration.

A couple of families came in yesterday, and the parents explained that they weren't citizens, but they wanted their kids to see how the process works. It was cool to see some kids watching and parents being excited about showing their kids how to vote.

It always strikes me, while I'm there, that democracy is citizen-run and we're all just people that live in the same county

I'm surprised that the Senate race is as close as it is between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker. With a runoff, I get to do this all over again on December 6, which is kind of exhausting. Call me in six months, not one month, but I'll probably still do it.

I'm surprised by the number of people that are willing to step up and do this work. It's a lot of hours and poll workers risk being harassed. I'm also surprised at the number of people who say things like, "I just don't have the patience for that" because the voting process is important.

Some of us choose to do this work and get paid for it. It's $300 to $325 a day for assistant managers. It's not like we're saints volunteering our time for no compensation. We're just saying that this matters to us.

I wish more people chose to do it. Once you've done it, you realize how incredible this process is. I almost feel like it should be required of all citizens.